Every ten years in the strange little town of Lennon, California, one person is chosen to return from the dead…
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Molly Morris’s Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet, which is out June 4th 2024.
Wilson Moss entered the town’s top-secret contest in the hopes of resurrecting her ex-best friend Annie LeBlanc, but that doesn’t mean she thought she’d actually win. Now Annie’s back and Wil’s ecstatic—does it even really matter that Annie ghosted her a year before she died…?
But like any contest, there are rules, and the town’s resurrected dead can only return for thirty days. When Wil discovers a loophole that means Annie might be able to stay for good, she’s desperate to keep her alive. The potential key? Their third best friend, Ryan. Forget the fact that Ryan openly hates them both, or that she and Wilson have barely spoken since that awkward time they kissed. Wil can put it aside for one month; she just needs to stop thinking about it first.
Because Wil has one summer to permanently put an end to her loneliness—it’s that, or lose her only friends…again. But along the way, she might have to face some difficult truths about Annie’s past and their friendship that, so far, she’s left buried.
ONE
DAYS UNTIL ANNIE LEBLANC DIES: 30
There are a few things nobody tells you about bringing your best friend back from the dead:
The dead don’t always arrive on time because, apparently, they need bathroom breaks or something on the way back from the afterlife. Not everybody is going to be happy you’ve chosen said person to come back. They’re not like POWs, where their return is universally celebrated. It’s more like the Rolling Stones going back on tour, or the arrival of another Twilight movie. The ceremony isn’t necessarily cult-y or weird. There aren’t any black robes or virgin sacrifices, which is probably a good thing. As the Resident Virgin Dork of Lennon, California, I would definitely be at the center of that pentagram. These are the things that are running through my head as I sweat my face off on the small stage rigged up at the head of the football field, the last remnants of an Atomic Fireball disintegrating in my mouth. Not the fact that my best friend, who I hadn’t talked to for over a year before she died, is on her way back to the land of the living. That, in most cases, this is not the hallmark of a best friend, and that by even calling Annie this, I’m basically confirming that I’m the loser everyone already suspects I am. No, I’m preoccupied with the fact that nobody ever seems to want to touch me in a way that is neither accidental nor platonic.
“What is wrong with me?” I mutter under my breath.
“What’s that, sweetheart?”
Ruth Fish smiles down at me. Her baby-pink lipstick matches her pale pantsuit.
I blink up at her and feel a blush spreading across my neck. “Nothing.”
She reaches out a hand and squeezes my shoulder. “It’s okay to be nervous,” she says.
“I’m not nervous,” I say quickly.
This is a lie. I am very nervous. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous in my entire life. Over the sounds of Bruce Springsteen playing from the stadium speakers, I can feel the eyes of everyone in the audience on me, their gazes somehow burning even stronger than the sun. I sink lower into my plastic chair and bring my comic book up so it covers my face, like that’ll make any difference. Besides a squat podium and Ruth Fish, I am literally the only thing on this outrageously small stage, baking like roadkill on the artificial turf of Lennon Union High School’s football field. They could’ve at least held this event somewhere with shade, but because I’m the youngest Welcome Back winner in Lennon’s history, hosting the ceremony at my school was the most obvious choice. Forget the fact that I graduated over a week ago and therefore am no longer an attendee of Lennon Union, that I’m nearly eighteen and technically almost an adult.
“It won’t be long now, honey,” Ruth says as she grabs her phone from underneath the stage’s central podium.
Ruth Fish is the kind of person who adds “honey” or “doll” or “dear” to the end of every sentence. She has the sugary sweetness of a little old grandma from Minnesota, even though Lennon is so far south, I can practically see Mexico from my house. Even though that by being the president of the Lennon Historical Society, she’s got to be into some seriously dark shit.
I swallow hard and focus on the football field, on the balloon arch sagging down from the goalpost fifty or so yards away. THIS IS EAGLE COUNTRY is spray-painted on the grass in burgundy and white, leading up to a banner with the words WELCOME BACK, ANNIE scrawled across it in uneven writing. One of the Ns in Annie is smaller than the other, as though it were crammed in at the last second after the sign-maker spelled Annie’s name wrong. Other than this and the streamers draped across the bleachers, the football field basically looks exactly as it did during the entire last season, when our team lost so many games, even the players’ parents stopped showing up.
“Hi, Wilson,” a voice says from a few feet away. The reporter from the Lennon News, who put the picture of a bewildered-looking me on the next day’s front page, my mouth dropped open so wide you could practically see my tonsils. He’s somehow wearing a khaki jacket in spite of the heat. “I’m Tom Bradford from the Lennon News. Could I get an interview with this year’s exciting winner?”
He makes it sound like I beat the Russians in a chess tournament, not that my stupid name was drawn out of a stupid bowl. I didn’t even plan to put myself in the running for Welcome Back; one second, I was cramming my visor into my backpack after a shift at work, and the next I was scribbling my and Annie’s names on the back of a receipt for a bag of Doritos. It was like my subconscious and fine motor skills were actively plotting against me, conspiring to bring about what could either be the best or worst thing to ever happen in my life. But once our names were in the bowl, I couldn’t take them back.
Before I can answer, Tom runs a hand across his bald head and peels a tiny notebook out of his pocket. “Why’d you pick Annie”—his eyes search the notebook pages—“LeBlanc?”
“I, uh…” I start to say, but look down at my shoes instead.
It’s a fair question, but one not even I’m sure how to answer. How does one say without sounding pathetic: Annie was the best friend I’ve ever had and even though she didn’t talk to me for a year before she died, I still think about her all the time and I’m pretty/sort of/mostly sure that if she were to come back right now, things would be different because she won’t be around that school or those people, although I’m not totally sure, so now that I think about it, maybe—
“Wilson?” Tom prompts.
I blink. “She is—uh, she was my best friend,” I stammer eventually. “I mean, with Ryan. That’s—she’s our other best friend. Was. We were best friends. We were the three best friends.” I swallow. “There were three of us.”
“Ryan Morton?” Tom says. “She was with you when you found out you won.”
Standing next to me in the newspaper picture, a scowl so deeply cut into her face, it looked almost painful. Of course Tom the reporter knows Ryan Morton, daughter of Terri Morton, owner of the most famous restaurant in Lennon.
And then, without warning, Tom turns and waves to someone in the crowd. “Ryan!” he shouts. “Come on up here.”
A figure rises from the crowd from somewhere within the first few rows. Ryan Morton walks slowly up the center aisle, looking annoyed at having been acknowledged.
As she climbs onto the stage, Tom points his pen at her. “Ryan, Wilson says you were best friends with Annie too.”
Ryan’s face morphs from a look of vague disinterest to one only someone who knows her favorite nail polish color as a kid was called Macaroni Sunshine could recognize as sarcastic glee.
“Oh yeah, totally,” she says.
The only thing more surprising than Ryan Morton admitting she was ever friends with Annie LeBlanc—sarcastic or not—is the fact that she’s even at this thing. Ever since finding out I won Welcome Back, she’s been ignoring me again, the Atomic Fireball peace offering firmly off the table.
“So, how do you feel about Annie coming back?” Tom says.
Nobody waits for me to answer.
From Annie LeBlanc Is Not Dead Yet by Molly Morris. Copyright © 2024 by the author, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
